At least one contributor to the NYT’s “Room for Debate” roundtable seems confident lawmakers can finesse the First Amendment dangers of proposals broad enough to criminalize some instances of saying “hello” to a stranger on the street. Scott Greenfield offers one criminal defense lawyer’s perspective.
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Interesting. Laura Beth is sort of working off the Sharia premise of women being escorted in public by a male relative. In this case the one she picked is her Uncle Sam.
Wouldn’t it be easier for the left to get itself a 3×5 notecard and give us an exhaustive list of the speech of it which it actually (if reluctantly) approves?
And of course this is a natural outgrowth of the ever-expanding workplace regulation of “offensive” sexual speech. If we can ban even playful sexual banter in the workplace, why not extend it to all other aspects of life? Henceforth, lawsuits over unwanted sexual advances at singles bars.
Or perhaps a “Yes means yes” agreement wherein both cat-caller and cat-callee would sign a legal agreement regarding the boundaries of their relationship.
No means yes; yes means aural.
[…] “There’s not much to do about catcalling, unless you’re willing to see a lot more minority men hassled by the police” [Kay Hymowitz, Time] Peer pressure seems to be a factor in restraining it [Andrew Sullivan] The “practice of catcalling is most taboo among members of the upper classes.” [Conor Friedersdorf, The Atlantic, earlier] […]